Gerald Poindexter Must Go

Right now, if this were poker, Surry County Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald Poindexter looks like a man who is thinking about folding because he's holding four aces and he wants five.

One doesn't have to be a lawyer to see obstruction. Justice in this country is supposed to be swift, and yet, here we sit, with no indictments, arrest warrants that have been signed but not executed, crime scenes left unsearched (and perhaps unguarded), and no indication that anything will change in the near future with regard to Michael Vick. How much evidence Poindexter requires at this point becomes moot, because whatever is produced will not be enough; he'll always need something more.

Convictions have been attained with far less circumstantial evidence, to be sure, just as acquittals have been won in the face of mountainous evidence (see Simpson, O.J.), but neither the dearth nor the surplus of evidence should preclude the people's representative from properly investigating malfeasance in his jurisdiction. The simple fact is this: credible evidence exists that a major dog-fighting operation was run out of property owned by Michael Vick. Evidence has been brought forth that corroborates the charge of dog-fighting. Michael Vick owned the property at the time of the dog-fighting. Any reasonable jurist should be able to connect these particular dots.

I have opined previously that public prosecutors keep their jobs based on their won-lost records, and that they routinely ignore cases which are anything but tap-in putts. However, it appears that this particular case would be a putt trembling on the edge of the cup, a strong breeze away from falling in, and Poindexter is the man refusing to knock it in. That is what I do not understand. Why has no progress been made in this case, given the relative ease of prosecuting it?

I know that Michael Vick will call up a dream team of lawyers to create reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors. I know that they will redefine the term "legal wrangling." I know that it will become a media circus. But does Poindexter really believe that if he fails to act all of this will just go away and become a non-story?

This is Michael Vick we're talking about. In celebrity, the public never forgets. Just as Mary Jo Kopechne remains the albatross around Ted Kennedy's neck, just as unrequited murder continues to haunt O.J. Simpson, so dog-fighting will follow Michael Vick wherever he goes. We still call the man Ron Mexico, for crying out loud, and that was just for something stupid, not for a felony. Vick's character will never recover from this, prosecution or not. There will be no forgetting. There will be no forgiving. A man who is deliberately cruel to animals is as low as a man who is deliberately cruel to children, and neither are welcome around the rest of us, Clinton Portis' ignorant remarks be damned.

So, why hasn't Gerald Poindexter attacked this with the vigor of a man looking to make his mark on the tree of justice in big, bold letters?

Maybe he, personally, has no problem with dog-fighting, even if the people of his state have felt strongly enough about it to deem it a felony, even if most people find the very idea disgusting and morally repugnant. Maybe he thinks that a whole lotta trouble has been raised up over what a man does with his dogs on the privacy of his own land. He'd be wrong to think like this, but maybe he thinks this way anyway.

Maybe he is a fan or a friend of Michael Vick, and doesn't want to be seen as doing anything to damage the reputation of a young black man. Again, he'd be wrong, but maybe he thinks this way anyway.

Or, maybe he hasn't investigated this case any further because a little more digging might show that he himself has things to hide. Maybe he doesn't want to dig any more because the digging might not only implicate Michael Vick, but himself.

Maybe he's a man who likes a dog fight...who likes to bet on a dog fight...who knew about a private affair that happened out on Moonlight Road, out back, where prying eyes weren't privy to what went on inside blacked-out houses.

Call me a crank. Claim that I've watched too many movies. Fine. All I know is that this is playing out like a movie, where the identity of the villain is plain to everyone in the audience but not to the people in the scene. Dramatically, we call that "discrepant awareness."

Here, I call it obstruction of justice.

Gerald Poindexter must be removed immediately, at the very least, and perhaps made to face charges himself.

Justice should be blind, but not bound.